WRSC2020 options

[Colin Sauze [cos]]

Dear all,

Its looking increasingly unlikely that it will be possible to host a
physical WRSC this year. While I think (and hope) some countries might
have COVID19 under control by August/September its not clear if there
could still be major restrictions on travel and holding events.

I think the possible options are:

1. Delay everything until next year.

2. Attempt to hold something in the winter/autumn, but probably much
smaller in scale.

3. Have a virtual competition using simulated robots. We could also do
an online conference, although i'm tempted to suggest people put their
efforts into a journal paper for the Special issue of the Journal of
Applied Sciences
(https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Robotic_Sailing_Support_Technologies)
instead.

4. Attempt to have a physical competition but run a some online
simulator events too.

What are people's thoughts on this?

I'd also like to get a list of potential simulators together, if you
know of or have written a simulator can you supply the following
information:

Link to its webpage

What license its been released under

Accuracy/realism of the physics modelling

What kind of control APIs it uses

What language its written in/what operating system(s) it runs on

What visual output it has


Colin.

--
Dr. Colin Sauze
Research Software Engineer
Supercomputing Wales Project
Room 2.16, Physical Sciences Building
Aberystwyth University,
Penglais, Aberystwyth
Ceredigion, UK, SY23 3DB

Tel: +44 (0)1970 622774
Webpage: http://users.aber.ac.uk/cos



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[Alexander Schlaefer]

Dear Colin,

I am afraid that it is unlikely to have a physical WRSC in August. We had
planned to host another conference in September but the board of the
related society is about to cancel this because of the financial risk.

With WRSC the additional issue is that we cannot get into our labs at the
moment. We all work from home and this is fine for writing and working on
data, but building actual sailing robots will not be possible for quite
some time.

Also, most things are postponed (including classes for us), i.e., things
will be busy in fall / winter (if there isn't the next pandemic wave ...).
If there is a sailing simulator that has a reasonable learning curve and
is sufficiently real that may be an option.

Cheers,

Alex

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Alexander Schlaefer
Institute of Medical Technology
Hamburg University of Technology
+49 (0) 40 42878 3050
www.tuhh.de/mtec

[Thomas Kluyver]

Alexander has a good point: even if things are settled down in time to hold the competition, teams won't have been able to work on their boats for very long. Trying to push it later in the year - when it's colder and darker - doesn't sound attractive, and it would require a leap of faith to start planning that when it may still have to be cancelled.

I remember we discussed the idea of having a simulated contest alongside the physical one in 2018, but the organisation for the physical competition and the conference didn't really leave time for it. So I think it's a good idea to try to do a purely simulated WRSC 2020. If we can figure out how to make it work, and how to make it an interesting event for participants and spectators, we can use it as a template for simulated competitions running alongside physical ones in future years.

The Southampton team have a basic simulator which we used to test our control software. I doubt it's suitable for running a competition, but here are the details:

> Link to its webpage

https://github.com/Maritime-Robotics-Student-Society/sailing-robot/wiki/Simulator

> What license its been released under

MIT

> Accuracy/realism of the physics modelling

Fairly basic: the angle of the boat to the wind, the wind speed and the deviation of the sail setting from the optimum, are used to compute a forwards velocity.

> What kind of control APIs it uses

ROS messages: the simulator is a set of nodes which listen to the boat control messages and send back messages like the sensors & GPS.

> What language its written in/what operating system(s) it runs on

Python & Linux

> What visual output it has

I think we can hook it up to a 2D map style visualisation through ROS easily enough. I'm not sure about anything beyond that.

Thomas

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[iampe...@googlemail.com]

Its a shame but there is always next year. I guess we could do some sort of time trial type thing where every one sails the same course at there local spot, leaving entry's open till the end of the year.

ArduPilot has a very basic simulator but it is heavy linked to the ArduPilot code. I have spent some some time looking for nice simulators with accurate sailing physics but there is not really much out there.

Peter Hall

[Colin Sauze]

The problem I can see with the time trials is that conditions could be really different for each team. We also have the problem at the moment that we can't even get to our boat, let alone take it anywhere to sail it and i'm sure most others are in a similar position. I guess running until the end of the year would mitigate this somewhat though.

I think I tried the ardupilot simulator a few years ago for some UAV work, but i'll have another look at it. I will try and put together a list of all the potential simulators and an evaluation of each.

Colin.

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